THE FIRST SUSPECT

The silence that hit her from the other end of the line was deafening. If Mia was distraught on hearing the news from her, she wondered how she would have felt if the news had reached her directly from Ronnie himself after the ambulance and the police reached out to him.

She'd just come out from the shower and was putting on her night clothes when the call reached her. Ronnie was on the brink of suffering a mental breakdown when he described what had happened to her on the phone.

According to him, her body had been taken to the morgue at St. Philip's Memorial Hospital. He was still there with the swarm of officers that had followed Dre's dead body from outside her house where it was found to the hospital.

"Are you sure?" Mia asked. "T—There has to be some kind of mistake. Dre's not dead!"

It was a trauma response. Emily was well aware of how painful it must have been for Mia who was just learning about it and disbelief was the first response her brain could give to the shocking news.